The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology, which often uses longest prefix matching of an Internet Protocol (IP) packet's destination address in determining how to forward the IP packet.
Within a packet switching device, a packet is typically split into multiple cells, with each of these cells forwarded through the packet switching device to a destination point. The packet is reassembled and then further processed (e.g., manipulated and/or forwarded). As the resources within a packet switching device are limited, all cells cannot be forwarded through the packet switching device at a same time.